Bethsaida and the Ministry of Jesus around the Sea of Galilee

The New Testament Gospels
tell us that Jesus left Nazareth and moved to
region of the northern
Sea of Galilee. What caused this move? There
were, perhaps, a few reasons. “Prophets are
not without honor, except in their own country
and in their own house” (Matt. 13:57) was one
good reason, but apparently not the only one.

The execution of John the
Baptist by the Tetrarch Herod Antipas, whom the
Gospels call “the fox,” and who was the son
of Herod the Great, was a much more powerful
reason to leave the Galilean heartland and to go
to the periphery. John the Baptist was executed
for denouncing Herod Antipas for marrying his
brother’s ex-wife. Jesus, being baptized by
John, feared that he would be the next to pay
for challenging the authorities and fled east to
the Sea of Galilee to be closer to the borders
and to cross into the territory of Philip Herod
in a time of adversity.

Jesus made his home among
the Jewish fishermen of the northern Sea of
Galilee and soon learned their lifestyle, the
hardship of their livelihood and their
anxieties. He made Capernaum his hometown.
Capernaum was no more than a small hamlet of
fishermen situated at the northwestern shores of
the lake. It contained one cluster of simple
courtyard houses constructed of the local black
basalt stones. Jesus did not remain only in
Capernaum, but wandered also between two other
locations in the vicinity: Chorazin and
Bethsaida. Scholars point out the fact that
Bethsaida was under the jurisdiction of Philip
Herod the brother of Herod Antipas. According to
the testimony of Josephus, Philip Herod was
different from his brother and much more beloved
by his subjects. In case of adversity Jesus
could find refuge at Bethsaida and it seems that
he made quite good use of this possibility. The
three places, Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida
are known as “the evangelical triangle” by
some scholars today. Jesus preformed in the
evangelical triangle his “mighty works” and
laid the foundation of his ministry. What he did
first and what last, where he went first, and
where next, we will never know. But we may be
able to find out how these places may have
looked.

We do not know much about
Chorazin in the time of Jesus. It may have been
a small hamlet comparable in size to Capernaum,
or perhaps slightly larger. Unlike Capernaum and
Bethsaida, Chorazin is not located near the
seashore. It is situated an hour’s walk from
the lake toward the slopes that descend to the
Sea of Galilee from the basalt plateau known
today as the Chorazin Plateau, which was at one
time part of the Naphtali tribe’s allotment.
The inhabitants of the evangelical triangle were
most probably very simple, hard-working people
who made their living out of fishing,
agriculture, local and small trade. They
probably also gleaned a living serving
passengers and itinerant merchants on the roads
leading from the Mediterranean coast to the
Golan Heights and toward the Greek cities in
southern Syria. Unlike Capernaum and Bethsaida,
first century Chorazin was never excavated. The
excavations at the site revealed only a
Byzantine townlet. The excavators assumed that
the first century town is located half a mile
north of the Byzantine town and on top of the
plateau.

Bethsaida was the largest
of these places. During the time of King David,
the thriving city served as the capitol of the
kingdom of Geshur. It was already an ancient
place when Jesus visited it. At this time, the
city walls of the ancient town were still seen
and used making it look like a fortified
village. Centuries after the Assyrian king,
Tiglat Pileser III, destroyed Bethsaida (732
BCE), the site was in ruins and very few people
remained in the remnants of the buildings. Very
little was done to improve their standard of
living, but soon after the conquest of Alexander
the Great in 332 BCE, it seems that new life was
infused into the town. New markets in the west,
which were opened up to the Phoenicians,
stimulated the Phoenicians to trade and to
develop a deep hinterland. New settlers came to
Bethsaida and to other places in Galilee and
developed merchandise such as wine, olive oil,
linen and dried fresh-water fish. These products
were traded to the coastal Phoenician cities for
luxurious items such as fine tableware and
imported wine.

In 90 BCE the Seleucid
dynasty, which ruled over Syria and Mesopotamia
finally collapsed and never recovered. A few
years later, the Hasmonean dynasty headed by
Alexander Jannaeus, who ruled Judea invaded the
former Seleucid territories and conquered
Galilee and Gaulanitis. Alexander Jannaeus
mimicked his father’s actions in Idumea by
converting the local Phoenician population and
settling Jewish veterans instead. The Jewish
population stopped trading with the coastal
cities and developed local trade with places in
Galilee. The roads to Phoenicia were perhaps
then less traveled.

During the time of Jesus’
ministry at Bethsaida, Julia-Livia, the wife of
the emperor Augustus and mother of the reigning
emperor Tiberius, died. In her memory, and in an
effort to establish the Roman Imperial cult,
Philip Herod elevated the status of Bethsaida to
the level of a city and renamed it Julia.
Josephus maintained that Philip Herod made these
changes by increasing the population and by
strengthening the city. For a long time we
wondered what else Philip Herod did and what
Josephus actually meant. In the past few years
we think we have discovered the answer to this
riddle. It seems that he built a lavishly
decorated temple on the highest spot of the
town. In recent years, fragments of the
decorations and the ground plan of the temple
were discovered. Cult objects were also found in
and around the temple. Among those objects were
two bronze incense shovels, pottery jugs and
juglets used for ritual practices, figurines,
amulets and votive objects. The temple did not
serve for more than a century. The excavations
reveal that during the second century CE it went
out of use and a private house was built on top
of it.

In other parts of the
site, excavations reveal a domestic residential
quarter. A few houses, typical of rural
courtyard houses, have been excavated thus far.
They consist of a spacious courtyard surrounded
by several rooms. As a rule, the kitchens were
built at the east, the dining room (triclinium
in Latin) at the north and bedrooms on the
second floor. Most of the activities were
carried out in the open-air courtyard. In areas
such as Galilee where most of the year the skies
are blue and cloudless, a big part of a family
life took place in the courtyard. It was the
place where the family would convene for
activities such as work, fixing and mending
fishing gear, processing and preparing all kinds
of food and meeting with friends and family to
discuss various issues of concern: political,
religious and economic.

In one of the houses we
discovered a wine cellar with wine jars still in
it. In another house we discovered that the
owner of the house used to drink high-quality
imported wine, which was produced in the island
of Rhodes.

The Gospels relate that
Jesus performed “mighty works” in these
places. Here he healed the sick and preached to
his audience and disciples about the Kingdom of
Heaven. He told his poor and humble fishermen
that success and wealth in this world do not
mean the same thing in the next life. He
explained that there is reward in righteous
living and that if it does not come in this
world, it will surely come in the Kingdom of
Heaven. In Capernaum, he healed a paralyzed man.
In order to get him to the house, the audience
had to remove the roof of the building and lower
him through it.

In another episode a Roman
military commander (a centurion), who dwelt in
the village, approached him. The centurion asked
him to heal a boy who was lying sick at his
home. The centurion knew that Jesus would not go
to his home to heal the child because a Halakhah
(Jewish law), decreed by the Rabbis, forbade
Jews to enter gentiles’ homes. Jesus was
thrilled by the centurion’s faith because he
did not find such faith among his Jewish
fellowmen.

“Go home,” he said,
“and the boy will be healed.”

In the evangelical
triangle Jesus met his first disciples. They
were Simon-Petrus, the fisherman from Bethsaida,
and his brother Andrew. Jesus told them to stop
being fishers of fish and become fishers of men.
Philip, another disciple, was from Bethsaida as
well. Two more fishermen, James and John, the
sons of Zebedee, the wealthy fisherman who hired
workers to fish for him, probably also came from
this town. In addition to healing individuals,
Jesus performed miracles to the multitude. On a
plain not far from Bethsaida, he was followed by
a crowd of 5,000 people and when there was
nothing for the crowd to eat, Jesus managed to
feed the crowd with just two fish and five
loaves of bread (this is traditionally referred
to as the Miracle of the Multiplication of
Loaves and Fishes – Matt. 14:13-21).

On two other occasions he
preached the famous sermons in which he laid the
foundation of the Christian faith. One sermon
was made from the top of a mound and the other
was made from a boat to a crowd who had gathered
on the seashore.

Jesus did not stay only in
the evangelical triangle. He sailed to the other
side of the Sea of Galilee and near the city of
Hippos, where he healed a man plagued by demons.
The man had a legion of demons in him; Jesus
cast them to pigs, which leaped to the lake and
drowned. Jesus feared that his miracles would
provoke the inhabitants and told the man not to
talk about it.

After the healing of a
blind man in Bethsaida, Jesus once again
prepared to travel, this time heading north. He
took the road to the capital city of the
Gaulanitis (Golan) region and arrived at the
area of Caesarea Philippi. There his disciples
questioned him whether he was the Messiah. Jesus
refused to answer. After leaving Caesarea
Philippi, Jesus probably traveled to the city of
Tyre, situated on the Mediterranean coast, where
he performed several miracles. He probably then
returned to the northern shores of the Sea of
Galilee and went back again to the region of the
Decapolis (a league of ten cities, which were
founded by Greek veterans and local Hellenized
Syrians) where he miraculously fed a multitude
of 4,000 people. The crowd that followed him to
this site was apparently thoroughly gentile.

Jesus probably had the
feeling that not all were persuaded unto
repentance. Consequently, he left in anger,
rebuking the three places saying: “Woe to you,
Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, for if I had
done these mighty works in the sinful cities of
Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented in
sackcloth and ashes.” (Matt 11: 21)